Propane production, inventories, exports focus of supply meeting
Ron Gist of IHS presented to the National Propane Gas Association‘s Propane Supply and Logistics Committee during the association’s fall meetings in Miami.
He referenced the high national and regional inventories and the doubling of propane production from gas plants in the last seven years, to about 1 million barrels per day. He also talked about the U.S. export market, which has shot up to more than 400,000 barrels per day, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
Gist doesn’t foresee regulatory relief forcing companies to stop propane exports. Instead, “You need to make state and national regulatory agencies aware when there might be a problem coming,” Gist told the committee. “You need to have consumers constantly filling tanks, on a monthly basis, and not when everyone has an emergency. Fix the things you can in this market, and what’s left the exporters can take.”
Competing with international interests for domestic barrels is a hard fact, “but you still have the cheapest propane in the world,” he said.